Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door

recode.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 71 posts

Re: The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door

#21

Post by gaius »

cageface wrote: post #9
mdorazio wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people (myself included) would compare X in intent and setup to PARC from the 1970s. The latter managed the extraordinary feat of pushing out a major innovation on average about once every 2.5 years from 1970 to 2000. That's things like laser printing, OOP, Ethernet, etc. that went on to build industries or take existing ones in new directions. X, on the other hand, has been around for over 6 years now and as fa…

It may be true that it's harder now to make those kinds of leaps than it was in the 1970s though.

Why?

I mean, everything is obvious in retrospect. I'm sure there were some PARC guys bemoaning that all the fundamental discoveries were already made in the 1950s... Google today probably has bigger budgets than Xerox had then (tho' that's just a guess on my part)

Re: The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door

#22

Post by bullfightonmars »

mdorazio wrote: post #8
advisedwang wrote: post #3

If Google is really aiming as high as it says it is, you would expect the rate of successes to be fairly low. A true "moonshot" success - one that creates a whole new industry - every decade would still be a phenomenal success. Maybe we just need patience?

Many people (myself included) would compare X in intent and setup to PARC from the 1970s. The latter managed the extraordinary feat of pushing out a major innovation on average about once every 2.5 years from 1970 to 2000. That's things like laser printing, OOP, Ethernet, etc. that went on to build industries or take existing ones in new directions. X, on the other hand, has been around for over 6 years now and as fa…

PARC may have pushed out innovative tech every 2.5 years but didn't it take much longer for most of those technologies to change the shape of or come to be foundational to tech?

Re: The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door

#23

Post by kllrnohj »

flexie wrote: post #16

I have been wondering if Google hasn't already lost the self driving race to Tesla. Google still drives a few test vehicles around and has totalled some 2.7 million km: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_self-driving_car Tesla has more than 100,000 model S driving around and in just 7 months their auto pilots have already surpassed the km driven by Google for the past 7 years by almost a factor 100 (roughly 200M…

200M km of adaptive cruise control & lane assist on a highway is very different from 2.7M km of fully autonomous driving on city streets & highway.

Re: The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door

#24

Post by haberman »

flexie wrote: post #16

I have been wondering if Google hasn't already lost the self driving race to Tesla. Google still drives a few test vehicles around and has totalled some 2.7 million km: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_self-driving_car Tesla has more than 100,000 model S driving around and in just 7 months their auto pilots have already surpassed the km driven by Google for the past 7 years by almost a factor 100 (roughly 200M…

> I realise it's not apples to apples and that Google's cars may be more autonomous for now.

I think that is an understatement. This video shows why staying in your lane on a highway (what Tesla autopilot does) and dealing with city streets are two just completely different things: https://youtu.be/tiwVMrTLUWg?t=8m49s

I think Tesla has a ton of catching up to do to compete with where Google is right now.

Re: The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door

#25

Post by ocdtrekkie »

flexie wrote: post #16

I have been wondering if Google hasn't already lost the self driving race to Tesla. Google still drives a few test vehicles around and has totalled some 2.7 million km: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_self-driving_car Tesla has more than 100,000 model S driving around and in just 7 months their auto pilots have already surpassed the km driven by Google for the past 7 years by almost a factor 100 (roughly 200M…

It's not just going to be about straight miles driven, it's about the technology being focused on and what's possible with it. Both Tesla and comma.ai are focusing primarily on what the car can see and do with it's own sensors... Google's cars are only functional on roads excessively mapped far above the normal Google Maps level. Google's existing strategy for self-driving cars isn't practical at a national level because of that extensive mapping requirement, and it possibly never will be. (Google's cars may have driven x number of million miles, but it's all the same very small number of roads.) And while prices drop as technology develops, bear in mind that in addition to all of that, Google's sensor platform is the most expensive out there.

Additionally, I've read some really interesting articles about research other car manufacturers have done. For instance, Google has never tested in bad weather, but Ford has been working on self-driving cars that work in snow. And while Google just assumes the humans are meant to be 'along for the ride', Volkswagon did some really good UI work, in terms of figuring out how to make the car's actions predictable, and hence, less scary. (Essentially, the car indicated to the driver what it was about to do before it executed a maneuver.)

Google is really good at capitalizing on their self-driving car project for marketing purposes, but it's extremely unlikely it'll ever be a market leader.

Re: The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door

#26

Post by freyr »

mathattack wrote: post #6
advisedwang wrote: post #3

If Google is really aiming as high as it says it is, you would expect the rate of successes to be fairly low. A true "moonshot" success - one that creates a whole new industry - every decade would still be a phenomenal success. Maybe we just need patience?

Yes - this is the VC model. Hitting 100-1000x results every once in a while, as opposed to lots of 3-10x results.

Yes, but eventually the VC needs to hit that 100x result. GoogleX has not. Heck, nothing's even really made it out the gate.

The self-driving car is the project that seems to have the biggest potential impact, but the string of high-profile departures over the last year or two is worrisome.

Also, the leader wearing Rollerblades to meetings seems far too much like a parody of "quirky tech visionary" for my comfort. But maybe I'm more traditional/close-minded than most here.

Re: The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door

#27

Post by jfoster »

kllrnohj wrote: post #23
flexie wrote: post #16

I have been wondering if Google hasn't already lost the self driving race to Tesla. Google still drives a few test vehicles around and has totalled some 2.7 million km: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_self-driving_car Tesla has more than 100,000 model S driving around and in just 7 months their auto pilots have already surpassed the km driven by Google for the past 7 years by almost a factor 100 (roughly 200M…

200M km of adaptive cruise control & lane assist on a highway is very different from 2.7M km of fully autonomous driving on city streets & highway.

Think of the data collection aspect of it, though. Tesla's driving AI will know what happens in the real world better than Google's driving AI does.

Re: The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door

#28

Post by cageface »

gaius wrote: post #21
cageface wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be true that it's harder now to make those kinds of leaps than it was in the 1970s though.

Why? I mean, everything is obvious in retrospect. I'm sure there were some PARC guys bemoaning that all the fundamental discoveries were already made in the 1950s... Google today probably has bigger budgets than Xerox had then (tho' that's just a guess on my part)

A lot of discoveries get exponentially harder. Compare the LHC to experiments people were doing 100 years ago for an extreme example.

Re: The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door

#29

Post by jfoster »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #25
flexie wrote: post #16

I have been wondering if Google hasn't already lost the self driving race to Tesla. Google still drives a few test vehicles around and has totalled some 2.7 million km: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_self-driving_car Tesla has more than 100,000 model S driving around and in just 7 months their auto pilots have already surpassed the km driven by Google for the past 7 years by almost a factor 100 (roughly 200M…

It's not just going to be about straight miles driven, it's about the technology being focused on and what's possible with it. Both Tesla and comma.ai are focusing primarily on what the car can see and do with it's own sensors... Google's cars are only functional on roads excessively mapped far above the normal Google Maps level. Google's existing strategy for self-driving cars isn't practical at a national level bec…

Tesla is either already mapping roads through the sensors on their cars, or is only one software update away from doing so. Their mapping data will be a lot fresher than Google's.

Re: The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door

#30

Post by in_cahoots »

jfoster wrote: post #27
kllrnohj wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

200M km of adaptive cruise control & lane assist on a highway is very different from 2.7M km of fully autonomous driving on city streets & highway.

Think of the data collection aspect of it, though. Tesla's driving AI will know what happens in the real world better than Google's driving AI does.

Does Tesla collect data when Autopilot is turned off? Otherwise I would be very curious to know how many miles of non-highway driving it has logged.
Post reply on HN